The present invention relates generally to navigation by satellite, GPS and GLONASS, and more specifically but not by way of limitation, to a novel method and arrangement to maximize the accuracy of the navigation coordinates of interest, position, velocity, and time.
Currently and in the past, GPS (and GLONASS) users select the four satellites from those in view of the user; to solve for the three orthogonal components of position and velocity, and the time component based on the minimization of the value of the position dilution of precision (PDOP), horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP) or geometrical dilution of precision (GDOP). The geometric arrangement of the selected four satellites (and fewer under constraints such as operating at sea level) satellites degrades the basic solution accuracy which would be attainable with an ideal geometric arrangement of the four satellites. This is termed the dilution of precision (DOP).
Terminology for the common DOP measures include:
GDOP: Geometric Dilution of Precision, related to 3 spatial coordinates and time PA0 PDOP: Position Dilution of Precision, related to 3 spatial coordinates PA0 HDOP: Horizontal Dilution of Precision, related to the 2 horizontal spatial coordinates PA0 VDOP: Vertical Dilution of Precision, related to the vertical spatial coordinate PA0 TDOP: Time Dilution of Precision, related to the time component.
The standard method of minimizing PDOP, HDOP or GDOP provides for selecting the best to select the four satellites for pseudo ranging, and then solving for three spatial components and time provides good general accuracy from only four satellites. The standard method does not specialize the DOP measure to maximize the accuracy available, nor does it use the additional information from satellites other than the best four selected.
The object of this invention then is to maximize the accuracy of the component(s) of interest to the GPS (and GLONASS) user; firstly by specializing the DOP to the component of interest, so as to select the group of four (and under some constraints, fewer) visible satellites which provides the greatest measurement accuracy for that component; and secondly, by using the specialized DOP measure to select lower top ranked multiple groups of four satellites, estimate the value of the component of interest for each of these top ranked groups, weight these estimates, and then combine these weighted estimates in a least squares solution for maximum accuracy.
This invention reduces the effects of error sources such as multi-path, random noise, and time bias which exist to a larger extent in current systems, by using the inherent averaging from the least squares solution of the weighted estimates from multiple satellite groups. This invention reduces the error due to dilution of precision by using the DOP measure specialized to the component of interest.
This invention is applicable to the navigation of any object including, for example, a wide range of vehicles; automobiles, trucks, marine vessels, aircraft, snowmobiles, tractors, motorcycles; basically any vehicle that moves under human control, and has access to the GPS (and GLONASS) RF signals; as well as non-vehicular carriers. Some specific applications of this invention, of particular interest, include altitude and lateral runway distance for aircraft and space return vehicles landing under instrument conditions; and marine position location for ship traversing in narrow shipping and harbor lanes.